Agressively atonal jazz and plenty of skin compete for attention in this late-60s grindhouse gem. Mr. Mari is a kind of modern-day Rasputin who keeps lots of cash and hard drugs handy to help out the young women who come to him out of desperation.
Glory is an uptown housewife with a gambling problem and a penchant for receiving guests in a sheer nightie. Mr. Mari can help get the monkey off her front, if not off her back. Stella's a beautiful young junkie, but too strung out to pose for Max's nudie pics. A quick fix and a shower makes her feel like dancing nude. Diana is a smart girl (but a terrible actress) who's "in trouble" in the old-fashioned sense... by her English teacher. This is the worst of the vignettes, with a marble-mouthed, semi-attractive girl a bit thick around the thighs.
Dirt(?) is an exotic lesbian with attitude. Why she comes to Mr. Mari is unclear, since she surely isn't going to "put out" as he expects of the others. Hers is the weirdest story: she's worried her blind lover (who paints!) will leave her after she's donated an eye to cure the girlfriend's blindness! Ann is a cute prostitute enlisted by gangster Cue Stick--a combination of Woody Allen and Jerry Lewis with the anger on the outside instead of the inside--to help pull a jewel heist. Maybe Mr. Mari can help her blow town before Cue Stick gets wise. Maybe.
The conclusion goes for broke and pours on the sleaze as Mr. Mari imagines all the girls visiting him at once and fulfilling his ultimate misogynistic fantasy. Overall, it's a weird trip but a pretty interesting and even erotic one until the bizarre conclusion makes it all too clear what a complete creep Mr. Mari really is. Then it becomes simultaneously ridiculous and sublime.
Another highlight: plenty of exciting rotary phone dialing.
